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Friday, May 29, 2015

Convergence: Shazam! #2 Review and *SPOILERS*

Mr. Mind By Gaslight

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
It's time to finish out our visit to Fawcett City with this conclusion to Convergence: Shazam! and while I wasn't exactly a fan of the first issue, I will be sad to see it go because even though I have a hard time going back to older comics, due to how much the medium has evolved over the decades....... There's still something special about a more innocent time and our heroes being more cheesy than....... well, not cheesy I guess. Well, there's no one cheesier than the Big Red Cheese himself, Captain Marvel and after we saw the Captain defeat a new incarnation of the Monster Society of Evil last issue, the cliffhanger showed us that Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr. and him would have to take on Gotham By Gaslight and they better get to it pretty fast because as we saw, that city's zeppelins were bombing the hell out Billy Batson's hometown. Let's see if our heroes prevail in this issue and if Fawcett City gets to survive. Let's check it out.

Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Bulletman and Bulletgirl trying to stop the bombing balloons, when they're saved by the Marvels, who have returned after their fight with the Monster Society. This part is a bit funny to me because while everyone else was powerless during their year under the dome, Bulletman and Bulletgirl's helmets still gave them their abilities and here we are now and they can't even take down a few zeppelins............. All they really need to do is fly through them head first............ Well, it makes sense to me. Anyway, Captain Marvel tells Mary and Jr. to stay and help the Bullets, while he moves along to go check out this Gaslight City and see what he's up against. While I initially thought that the Captain would simply fly in, wreck house and leave, here we see that he barely stands a chance against Batman's flying majig....... which shoots fire. Yeah, Batman's been preparing all year for the dome to come down and for someone to invade his city and that paranoid son of a bitch went and created a Gaslight Batwing........... That's really bad ass. He's got his majig, a gigantic Jacob's Ladder........ the electric kind, not the stairway to heaven kind and Captain Marvel was fool enough to go and fly right into it, but goddamn am I happy that he did because it leads to the best splash page of the book, where the high voltage zap is actually forcing Captain Marvel to change back into Billy and the two have a split second conference about it inside of Billy's head. Just a awesome scene that leads to Billy taking control of his power and forcing himself to stay as the Big Red Cheese. We get back to Batman By Gaslight Vs. Captain Marvel, but luckily it quickly leads to the two teaming up to check out a disturbance in the city.

After discovering that they have to bypass a force field which is weird as hell inside Gotham By Gaslight, the two heroes go underground to get to their destination and it's there that they come across Killer Croc........... which is funny as hell because Croc didn't count on someone like Captain Marvel. Once the Captain takes care of Croc, it's out of the frying pan and into the fire as they find Mr. Atom, all rebuild from last issue and now rocking an Iron Giant look and that's not all........... He's recreated the Monster Society of Evil, using Gotham villains. Yeah, I still would have had my money on Captain Marvel wiping the floor with all of them on his own, but he didn't need to because Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. came to back him and Batman up. Pulling some wisdom of Solomon shit out of his back pocket, Captain Marvel realizes that Mr. Atom never cared about the Monster Society and he never controlled people's minds like he's doing with these Gotham rogues, so he deduces a ruse is a foot and tears into Mr. Atom revealing Mr. Mind has been the man....... um, excuse me, the worm behind the curtain all along........... Sort of like a Puppet Master.

In the end, Mr. Mind says the hell with it all and activates a self destruct device in hopes of taking Captain Marvel out with him, but you can't keep the mightiest mortal down and after our heroes walk away from the fire and wreckage............ they're declared the winner of the game........... which doesn't make much sense to me because how the hell was Captain Marvel's opponent someone from his own city? Besides for that though, this was a hell of a issue that really won me over from my initial skepticism that I had going in.

That's it for this issue of Convergence: Shazam! and I'm really happy that I enjoyed this issue because I came into this event really looking forward to seeing Shazam and after a, in my opinion "wonky" first issue, this was able to push past my Negative Nancy attitude and become a real joy to this final week of Convergence. The art was a lot of fun and seeing all the Gotham By Midnight Rogues, while adding Mr. Mind in the mix was a great move by Jeff Parker to not only shake the attention of Batman fans, but also give the Shazam fans a little alien worm action while he was at it. A real treat this week and I hope everyone gets it........... even if the ending left me scratching my head a bit....... but it's the final week of Convergence so I guess we'll just go with it.......... Oh, and one final thing, Gotham By Gaslight Mr. Freeze might be my new favorite thing.

Bits and Pieces:
Reading this issue was a real joy and not only did it make me wish that we had a Shazam title in the current continuity........... well, actually I always wish that, but it made me want to go back and read Gotham By Gaslight, so that's a job well done right there. Just a really fun title, with really fun art, so you know what this book was?............ Really? You don't know?......... Come on, it was fun. Get on the trolley and get yourself some Convergence: Shazam!.

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